Lady Bluebeard
by dangerousdame
Summary: Clarice was a good girl, and would never dream of prying into her Justine's secrets. But she just had to learn what was causing the nightmares and memory lapses, and all the answers seemed to lie behind a bolted door.


There was something the matter with her ladyship, and there had been as long as Clarice can remember. It wasn't that she was a lady rakehell- good for her as far as Clarice was concerned, for if she had the looks and the position to enjoy so many gentlemen she'd do the same. It wasn't her funny ideas about class or morality, for there are surely many of her station who feel the same way. Justine wass simply more direct about it when she talked of the ridiculousness of revolution, of how the aristocracy has the right to do what it pleases to lesser creatures.

"I don't mean to you, Clarice- never to you!"

Clarice didn't take any offense or worry. Talk is harmless, and Justine had always been kind to her. No, her concerns about her mistress regarded her health and fragility- she hated to say sanity, but that is what it came down to. It's no wonder her ladyship distrusted doctors after what her mad father put her through, but that only left Clarice to care for her, and she didn't know what to think anymore.

It started with the nightmares. Ever since her father's accident, Justine had talked in her sleep, and a fitful sleep it was. What she said was usually indistinct, but sometimes she cried out so loudly that Clarice rushed to her side for fear something had happened. On those occasions, the word "father" could clearly be heard- or at least, it used to. Of late she had called out "love" and "forgive me", though for what, Clarice could not say.

The nightmares were cause enough for concern by themselves, but recently there had been memory lapses. When questioned about it, Justine said she was taking medicine for her "spells", but Clarice wondered if it wasn't the medicine itself that was causing them. She would never forget the worst of it, when she found her ladyship collapsed outside the door to the basement.

"Lady Justine! What happened? Can you stand?"

She raised herself to her knees, but shook her head.

"No," she moaned in a voice utterly lost and unlike her own. "No, I'm not Justine. I can't be! She was the monster- the demon who tortured me! I can't be her!"

Clarice helped her ladyship to her bed, unsure of what else to do. All the while, her mad pleading continued.

"Hide me...get me out of here...don't let Justine find me! She destroyed those men, she tried to make me a murderer! Don't let her find me...don't let her find me..."

Justine slowly lost consciousness as Clarice stood by the bed, feeling helpless and useless. She made sure to close the basement door, assuming the sounds she had heard coming from down there had been her mistresses' unhealthy ramblings. What was she to do in such a situation?

She didn't have to think of anything, though, for when her ladyship awoke it was as if nothing had happened. In a way, that was worse.

"You were terribly upset before- I didn't understand what you were saying. My lady, can you tell me what is wrong?"

The newly smiling Justine waved Clarice's concerns away.

"I'm fine, my dear. How sweet of you to be concerned for me!"

"But I don't understand. You spoke as if you didn't know who you were, and said things about torture-"

"Silly Clarice. I'm sure I said nothing of the sort!"

It was unnerving, to say the least. And it wasn't the last time such things happened, even if it was the most extreme. While preparing for a banquet, Justine suddenly paused and stood still as a statue, with a look of confusion and deep fright upon her face. It passed after a minute, but while she stood it was as if she had no idea where she was. Again, Clarice had seen her ladyship leaving the basement earlier, and thought she heard voices of some kind when the door was open.

Whatever was happening, there was a pattern to it.

Clarice was a good girl, and had never asked questions she had no right to. She was her ladyship's personal maid, and what occurred in locked rooms was none of her affair. What was her affair was her ladyship's well being, and she hated to feel as if there was nothing she could do to help. Poor Justine had suffered so when her father locked her away (she could tell, though her mistress would never speak of it,) and she was always so good to Clarice when other nobles might not have been. And though she might seem contented, hadn't her lovers all left her, one by one? There had been a time when they were constant presences in the castle, but now they had all vanished.

Poor, poor lady Justine. So lonely and so unwell. She'd never forbidden Clarice from opening the basement door, had she? And even if she had, there was something down there which was causing her to suffer, and it was Clarice's duty as a good Christian woman to do what she could about it. Throughout the banquet, her ladyship had not been herself, though she covered for it well enough to fool her guests. There had been so many pauses, so many moments of forgetfulness, and a murmur Clarice almost missed about how the medicine "should have worn off by now."

When she'd put her mistress to sleep, Clarice did the only thing she could think of to help her. After all, how could she help if she didn't know what the matter was?

The door to the basement was still unlocked, and as she descended the stairs, Clarice knew she was right- there had been voices down there. She couldn't make out their words, only that they were most likely male. (The late lord's ghost? Where had his accident taken place?) There was a moment before Clarice reached the next door and its bolt when she thought of a fairy tale, and how a woman had found her husband's locked room t be full of corpses upon an illicit examination.

Silly Clarice, thinking of ghosts and fairy tales.

In years to come, she would reflect that there was one thing worse than finding Bluebeard's room to be full of the dead- that was to find those inside it still alive, and able to speak of what happened.


End file.
